I think I've always been extremely conscious of the kind of empowerment that comes from realizing that you're in a position to express yourself. And the fact is that - and this is the thing about punk rock - that everyone is in a position to create culture, and that point has never been lost on me. To me, that's an important political aspect of doing this, and trying to live in a way that's about dialogue as opposed to like... spectacle.

One thing I know that's really cool - it seems to me that Blake Schwarzenbach [Jets to Brazil frontman; ex-Jawbreaker] is someone who's made music that's people continue to take really personally.

It's sort of a fine line where you're dying to express it and then hoping no one really gets it that closely. But I'm pretty much over that. I'd really just like to be understood.

I'm an atrocious business man, because it's just not the way I think about things. And that's pretty much what all that Grammy/MTV kind of stuff is tied into.

There are a few artists that I'm really into. I mean, I'm a big Nick Cave fan. And there's a band from Australia called Big Heavy Stuff that's one of my favorite bands ever.

Another cultural thing that's really creepy. It's not like in the '60s, where there were definitely great high points of creativity where people were trying to outdo each other to be noticed even.

I'm the kind of person that, as a listener, will go the extra mile to interpret something that's fairly meaningless, or that might be meaningless.